264 CHAPTER IX. DR. SLOWMAN. "Of Truth, of Grandeur, Beauty, Love, and Hope, Of blessed consolations in distress; Of th' Individual Mind, that keeps her own WORDSWORTH, Preface to the Excursion. AT this point in Dr. Lee's history, we may pause to look at a sketch, to which he gave the name prefixed to this chapter, and to which he kept adding line after line for several years, between 1850 and 1860. "Dr. Slowman" is not a real character. He is, I should rather say, the ideal of a real character, which has a certain affinity to the character of Dr. Lee himself. Whether Dr. Lee meant to construct an imaginary biography, and to publish it, or whether he merely sought in this form an outlet for his thoughts and speculations, does not appear from what he has written about Dr. Slowman. Probably, with the idea of ultimate publication in his mind, he occupied and amused his leisure by recording, under the guise of Dr. Slowman's biographer, his own convictions, speculations, or feelings, on many of the questions which interested him. I do not know that anything else among his MSS. admits us to a more inti mate knowledge of his mind than this compilation, which fills the greater part of a tolerably thick octavo notebook. Having gone carefully through it, I shall make such extracts as seem most characteristic. The title is "Some Account of the Life and Opinions of the late Rev. Samuel Slowman, D.D., by one of his Parishioners.' EXTRACTS. After a somewhat Carlylese condemnation of modern biography-mongers, and of the publicity into which every life is now-a-days dragged, he proceeds: "Would to God one were forty days and forty nights in the wilderness! The fasting, the wild beasts, even the devil, would be worth encountering, to hold communion with ourselves and with the Divinity without us and within us. I may here, once for all, introduce a remark which this last passage suggests, and which will be exemplified in many other cases in the course of this biography, that, Dr. Slowman, being a person of warm temperament, was apt, when he got into his rhapsodies, to go a little too far, at least it appeared so to us, but perhaps that was our mistake. I am not forward to pronounce judgment upon a man who was so much wiser and better than I can ever hope to be. I therefore entreat the gentle reader-flattering myself that gentle readers are not yet extinct -to receive my sentiments, when I venture to express them, provisionally; as matters of question submitted to him for consideration, not dogmas already defined, sanctioned, and to be received under pain of heresy and damnation. It would ill become the biographer of Dr. Slowman so to dogmatize or denounce; for he, loving soul, could bring himself to hate only three kinds of creatures-devils, tyrants, and inquisitors.". "But is it not interesting, and useful also, to see the minutiæ of men's characters, and to know somewhat in detail the thoughts and lives of eminent men? "Yes, sir,' he would reply, 'if they really thought thoughts or lived lives of their own, I should like to know a good deal about them, if the truth could be reached. But I tell you, that either living or thinking on a man's own account, is as rare nearly as are angels' visits. Are you not sick hearing the same things over, and over, and over, from pulpits, platforms, parliament, and all other elevated places, each fellow conceiting himself clever if he can but alter a little the order, or vary the phrase? I have heard sermons for the last sixty years; and I speak in sober earnest when I affirm that, in that time, I have not heard six men who had anything of their own to tell me-traditions all, hearsay, repetition. Some few, indeed, have succeeded in startling the world with a strange phraseology; and for a little the world, poor fool! stood amazed, and cried, "Here at length is a new thing under the sun." But before he had listened a few minutes, he found that it was just the old song bawled out in a new manner. "Is there anything whereof it may be said, see, this is new? It hath been already of old time which was before us." No people that live so little in retirement as we do, can ever be original. If we habitually live with the vulgar, that is, with the crowd of our fellows, we shall not only speak with the vulgar, but think with them.' "Now Dr. Slowman was a great admirer of retirement. This was one of his crotchets, as he used to think and say; and we shall meet this notion again more than once before we take leave of him. "But would it not be delightful to know more of many persons who have lived and done mighty acts, and said wise sayings? 66 6 Perhaps so,' he would answer musingly. I should like to know what Moses thought when he stood upon the summit of Nebo, or Elijah when he felt himself borne up in the fiery chariot, also what Paul thought when he heard Stephen pray for his murderers; though, perhaps, we should be disappointed if we knew. As for the heathen sages, most of them have told us more of their notions than we care to listen to. Plato and Cicero are both of them too loquacious. We grow weary at last of their infinite talk, and only render thanks that Providence permitted Ali to burn the Bibliotheca at Alexandria, and zealous monks to scrape out whole acres of uncdifying heathen lore. It was a merciful dispensation, whatever classical professors and editors may exclaim or groan.' "And then he would lower his voice and add, 'There is but one person of whose acts and words I should earnestly desire to have a more minute record. And yet the evangelists, not without a higher than human wisdom, have judged their concise and scanty narratives sufficient for our information, even regarding the history of Jesus Christ.' "My late revered friend was settled, at the age of twenty-nine, as minister of a parish, in this highly-favoured and ancient kingdom of Scotland, which had enjoyed the light of a Gospel ministry in an eminent degree. Three successive pastors had laboured in it during long lives with conspicuous zeal, if not with eminent success. They were all three undoubtedly, and even emphatically, evangelical; so that, as was acknowledged in all the country round, great were the privileges enjoyed by the people of Cailsie. Notwithstanding the administration so long of word and ordinances in singular purity and power, it was a sad and puzzling fact, that the inhabitants of this favoured parish were not decidedly better than their neighbours. Nay, it was maintained, with but too much appearance of truth, that the people of Knockbrae, and Drunkie, and Strathdune, who had been cursed with a succession of dry moderate and legal ministers, were better than the folk of Cailsie, a parish which had been a hundred years and more as a watered garden,' &c. Without moving further this ticklish question, I am bound to confess, that at the time when Dr., then Mr. Slowman, became minister, though there was much piety in the parish, and a great zeal for religion of a certain kind, there was so little morality that, as he said, the parishioners seemed so absorbed with the first Table of the Law that they had never got so far as to find out there was a second. "It being suspected that Mr. Slowman was tinged with what is called moderation, or, as English folk would say, was of the high and dry school, and would feed the flock with the dry husks of morality, good works, and such garbage, instead of regaling their hungry souls with the sappy and soul-satisfying doctrines and promises of the Gospel, a formidable opposition was raised against his settlement by a few men who had much to say with the population, being reputed sound in the faith, and able judges of doctrine. These persons did not relish the prospect of Mr. Slowman coming to be minister of Cailsie; not only because of his suspected moderation, but also because he had the character of a clear-headed man with a mighty strong will, so that they feared if he got himself fairly installed, their influence would be weakened or destroyed." "While the parish was in a tumult of agitation, and the more evangelical portion of the people had organized a formidable opposition to Mr. Slowman's induction, he settled the matter in a way which made an impression on the parishioners that never wore off as long as he lived. It showed he was an honest and a bold man: and in no profession are these qualities more esteemed or more necessary, than in that of a clergyman. "While the tumult was at the height, Mr. Slowman caused it to be intimated that he was to officiate in the parish church the following Sabbath. The people flocked to hear 'the dry stick' they had heard described. But the first few sentences of his morning prayer began to dispel the delusion, which was completely dissipated long before the sermon was finished. And the revolution of feeling was completed by the way in which he concluded the sermon. "Friends,' said he, 'I am informed there exists among you a great opposition to my settlement in this parish. As you do not know me, and never heard me preach, I thought it only justice, both to you and to myself, to come and introduce myself to you in this way, and let you hear what kind of things I have got to say to you. And now I have to inform you that if you don't wish me to come I will not come. If twenty persons out of this congregation will come into the Session House and tell me seriously that, in their opinion, the doctrine I preach is not likely to do them any good, I will to-morrow return the presentation to Lord, the patron. Don't think I wish to come here simply to draw the stipend. I have another end in view. I believe that you are a set of hypocritical, canting, lying, cheating, tippling, psalm singing, and praying scoundrels, and I should like to try my hand at pulling off the mask from your faces. And I give you fair warning that, if I come here, by the grace of God, I will not spare you. You know now what to expect. And now I shall wait my twenty honest friends in the Session House.' |